# Think About It Think About It engages today's leading thinkers in conversations about powerful ideas and how language can change the world. Page: Feed: --- ## Book Talk 69: American Medium, with Eyal Peretz _2026-01-03_ What is “America” not only as a political entity but in our imagination? How can we properly envision America, without repeating clichés that frame America as either reactionary or revolutionary, repressive or liberatory? I spoke with Eyal Peretz about his book American Medium, which looks at Hollywood to re-imagine the concept of "America" through the medium of film. By considering six… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6697777879.mp3?updated=1767380279) ## Free Speech 72: What is Free Speech with Fara Dabhoiwala _2025-10-09_ The speech debates have not abated, and it’s clear that invoking the First Amendment, and the importance of free speech for democracy, does not settle these debates but provokes more questions. We have lost our way, it seems, since people on all sides invoke free speech and then try to silence those they disagree with. Historian Fara Dabhoiwala of Princeton University reminds us that free speech… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK1491789760.mp3?updated=1759853413) ## Book Talk 69: Uncanny E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Wortsman _2025-10-02_ Step into the unsettling world of E.T.A. Hoffmann with translator Peter Wortsman to explore “The Sandman”—a tale that haunted Freud enough to spark his famous psychoanalytic analysis of “The Uncanny,” examining familiar things that unsettle and disturb us for no clear reason. What makes this bizarre story so deeply disturbing, even today? And how does Hoffmann’s genius, in all of his writing,… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6298695151.mp3?updated=1759245834) ## Book Talk 68: Ham’s Heaven with Ori Gersht _2025-09-11_ Listen to Ori Gersht speak about his novel Ham’s Heaven (Warbler Press, 2025). Inspired by the true story of the first great ape in space, it explores the friendship of an ape and his trainer to examine what we do with animals in the name of progress. Drawing on careful research and echoing the existential questions of Kafka’s “Report to an Academy,” Ham’s Heaven takes us on a journey that is as… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK5023145666.mp3?updated=1757443864) ## Book Talk 67 : The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science _2025-07-29_ What is reliable knowledge? Listen to philosopher Michael Strevens, author of The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, to understand how science discovers the truth. At the current moment, when expertise is under attack and the idea of truth is contested from all sides, Strevens explains the remarkable success of science’s “irrational” method to settle debates, regardless… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK2407960462.mp3?updated=1753918634) ## Book Talk 66: Political Hope, with Loren Goldman _2025-05-19_ How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to have hope in dark times, and how political hope differs from naïve optimism, faith in progress, or passive reliance on a hidden logic that will save us in the end. Goldman, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK7892543828.mp3?updated=1747580967) ## Book Talk 65 Emily Dickinson, with Sharon Cameron _2025-04-18_ We need Emily Dickinson’s startling originality today more than ever. This is why I sat down with Sharon Cameron, one of the greatest commentators on Dickinson’s poetry, to explore some of Dickinson’s poems in an extra-long podcast. “It’s astonishing that after forty years of reading Dickinson, I am still ‘awed beyond my errand’ by how Dickinson’s poems let us experience something viscerally, at… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK4271642004.mp3?updated=1744830915) ## Book Talk 64 How to Fall in Love with Questions: A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty _2025-04-15_ What do you do when faced with a big, important question that keeps you up at night? Many people seek quick answers dispensed by “experts,” influencers, and gurus. But these one-size-fits-all solutions often fail to satisfy, and can even cause more pain. In How to Fall in Love With Questions, Elizabeth Weingarten finds inspiration in a few famous lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK4313574450.mp3?updated=1744556834) ## Free Speech 71: Ruby Lowe on John Milton’s Definition of Free Speech _2025-02-17_ British poet John Milton published one of the earliest and still tremendously important defenses of free speech for our modern world. From his famous pamphlet Areopagitca (1644) to Paradise Lost (1667), Milton participated in debates regarding censorship and the right of the public to access the inner workings of Parliamentary politics. I spoke with Ruby Lowe about how today’s conception of free… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK9041990950.mp3?updated=1739642233) ## [Web Coding With AI, Live (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/DgjZYB9CB3bP) _2025-02-17 · **Sponsored**_ Collaborative screen sharing with simultaneous remote control, open source. ## Free Speech 70: Michael S. Roth on the Rise of Student Protests, the Fall of Some College Presidents, and Why Liberal Education Matters _2024-09-28_ The campus protests over conflict in Israel and Gaza have engulfed universities, and led to the resignation of several university presidents. In this podcast, recorded live at the New York Institute of the Humanities, Michael S. Roth, the long-time President of Wesleyan College, explains how he navigates sharp disagreements on campus, what he means by “safe enough spaces,” and how to understand… [Listen](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK1442037864.mp3?updated=1727457587)